Continuing Education Center

Decision Support Systems Using Excel

Real-life decision making often requires building interactive systems, which students
must know how to design and implement. To summarize, students and practitioners must
learn sufficient information technology (IT) skills so that they can build intelligent
information systems, alternatively, called decision support systems, which can run
sophisticated models at the back-end, but are friendly enough at the front end to
be used comfortably by any user.

A decision support system (DSS) gives its users access to a variety of data sources,
modeling techniques, and stored domain knowledge via an easy to use graphical user
interface (GUI). For example, a DSS can use the data residing in spreadsheets or
databases, prepare a mathematical model using this data, solve or analyze this model
using problem-specific methodologies, and can assist the user in the decision-making
process through a graphical user interface. Students and practitioners are frequently
being employed in positions that require developing DSS which are gaining widespread
popularity. As more and more companies install enterprise resource planning (ERP)
packages and invest in building data warehouses, those who are able to create decision
technology driven applications that interface with these systems and analyze the data
they provide will become increasingly valuable. Indeed, imparting DSS development
skills, which combine Operations Research/business skills with IT skills, will make
students and practitioners highly sought after in the modern workplace. CEUs 2.7